You'll never believe who's dropping dimes to the feds!

Sam Antar, formerly the CFO of Crazy Eddie, known in the New York area for over-the-top commercials that scared the hell out of kids (well, me at least), knows his way around a questionable balance sheet. For 15 years, he was the executive chef of book-cooking, ultimately taking a guilty plea to conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges. He stayed out of the clink by taking the stand on the government's side at a 1993 trial, ultimately sending his cousin, Eddie Antar to prison for seven years or so.

Crooks make the best cops, so to speak, and Antar is putting his skills to work. He's out hunting for accounting fraud and sending his analyses off to the SEC. On his blog, the former CFO laid out what he called a "bulletproof case" against Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) - a company that the SEC had been investigating since 2006. The inquiry has been reopened.

Continue reading Crazy Eddie's crazy ex-CFO investigates Overstock

Crazy Eddie's crazy ex-CFO investigates Overstock originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) announced on Thursday that it received a notice from the SEC stating that the company was under investigation concerning its "previously-announced restatements of its financial statements in 2006 and 2008 and other matters."

CEO Patrick Byrne noted in the press release that "All of the matters that are the subject of the subpoena have been thoroughly disclosed and we are disappointed, given the extensive public disclosures Overstock has previously made, that the SEC, given all of the challenges it faces, has apparently chosen to expend time and resources on another investigation of Overstock. Rest assured, I will continue to speak out as I have on the shortcomings of our financial regulatory system."

Continue reading Overstock announces 'another' SEC subpoena

Overstock announces 'another' SEC subpoena originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 19 Sep 2009 15:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

A new study published by Matthew Magilke of the University of Utah and Jeffrey T. Doyle of Utah State University suggests that public companies don't time their earnings releases based on how favorable or unfavorable the numbers might be.

This flies in the face of what most observers -- myself included --- have noticed. Unless there's some very rigid schedule for earnings releases, most companies prefer to dump bad news on Friday afternoons -- and if there's a three-day weekend coming up, then that's even better.

Continue reading Study says companies don't time their earnings releases. Oh, really?

Study says companies don't time their earnings releases. Oh, really? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Overstock reports GAAP profitability -- sort of

Overstock reports GAAP profitability -- sort of originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 02 Feb 2009 16:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Quarterly earnings calls are a great opportunity for investors to hear directly from the companies they've invested in and to get clarity from management when they answer questions posed by analysts. I listen to hundreds of calls every quarter, and I'm constantly surprised (and sometimes confused!) by the responses offered by management. This is the first in a series of occasional posts on some memorable quarterly earnings call moments.

Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK). Chairman and CEO Patrick Byrne never ceases to . . . amaze me. While I sometimes come away from their quarterly call more perplexed than ever, Byrne's responses to questions certainly stand out. Here are some of the more memorable comments from their latest quarterly call, held on October 24, 2008.

While commenting on accounting errors that resulted in a financial restatement, Patrick Byrne explained it this way:

"We had been managing to a yardstick that turned out to have a bit of rubber in it at the end of the quarter."

Well, that certainly clarifies things!

Moving on to a conversation on EBITDA and Cap Ex, we hear that OSTK is:

". . . like the proverbial boa constrictor digesting a baby hippo. We ate the baby hippo about three years ago -- actually right now -- and it's moved its way through the boa constrictor."

Continue reading Caught on the earnings call: Overstock's CEO offers EBITDA without the 'A'

Caught on the earnings call: Overstock's CEO offers EBITDA without the 'A' originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne takes a victory lap: not so fast originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Shares of Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) fell sharply on Friday after the company reported yet another quarterly loss and disclosed that it would have to restate its earnings. In the press release announcing the restatement and earnings, CEO Patrick Byrne told investors that "The total effect of the errors over the five and a half year period (during which we generated nearly $3.5 billion in revenues) is a reduction in revenue of $12.9 million and a $10.3 million increase to cumulative net loss."

In the grand scheme of things, this isn't material. And there's certainly no reason to think this is anything other than an error -- a result of Overstock being a sloppy, poorly run company with a distracted CEO battling the imaginary demon of naked short selling, but not accounting "fraud."

Here's the best part: One of the imaginary demons that Patrick Byrne was out battling was Gradient Analytics, a small independent research outfit that Overstock sued for putting out negative research reports. Earlier this month, the lawsuit was settled. In that press release, Overstock said that "Gradient now believes that, to the best of its knowledge, Overstock's stated accounting policies did in fact conform with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and regrets any prior statements to the contrary."

Here's my question: was Overstock aware of the need for an earnings restatement when it settled the lawsuit? Or did it push through a settlement just before it disclosed that Gradient's allegations of accounting issues were proven to be right on the money? We may never know.

The larger point is that Overstock shareholders would be much better off if Patrick Byrne devoted his energy to managing his company, not lashing out at anyone who says mean things about him.

Overstock announces earnings restatement originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 25 Oct 2008 12:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Given the weakness of consumer spending, a lot of investors are worried that Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) may not come through with the profitable year the CEO Patrick Byrne has gone on the record as predicting.

Indeed this necklace, pointed out by a poster on a Yahoo! message board, may be a bad omen:

Sterling Silver Moveable Toilet Necklace

• Enhance your style with this sterling silver necklace
• Pendant features a fun and edgy toilet design with a lid that opens and closes
• Jewelry includes a princess-length chain

If you want it -- and I'm sure you do -- you can buy one at Overstock. It's only $16.99.

It looks like this toilet bowl of a company could be releasing some pretty crappy numbers.

Overstock looks to the toilet for revenue growth originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Overstock CEO: Stockpile food for the credit crunch! originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Patrick Byrne, the petulant chairman and CEO of the king of corporate crybabies, Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK), issued yet another rambling press release on Friday, lamenting the fact that the company had reappeared on the Regulation SHO Threshold List after its stock price tanked following quarterly earnings that disappointed investors. Byrne said that ". . . the price of it fell 40% when we announced earnings that largely beat the Wall Street consensus expectations."

Regardless of how impressed Mr. Byrne was with yet another quarterly loss from his company, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Scott Devitt wasn't buying it. He downgraded the stock from hold to sell, pointing out that the company's revenue growth benefited from "fairly easy comps," adding that Overstock "may never achieve operating margins above 2%-3% at scale."

But never mind analyst predictions. Let's look at Patrick Byrne's predictions. In a 2001 interview with The Wall Street Transcript, Byrne said that by 2004 he "would want to see us well over $400 million and as profitable as hell. Making a ton of money. I want to see that next year."

That was seven years ago, and Overstock still has not reported anything resembling a profitable year, although Byrne is predicting that 2008 will be profitable in spite of a year-to-date loss of $10.4 million. Apparently Mr. Byrne is upset that no one is taking his forward-looking statements seriously anymore, but the fact is that, historically, Mr. Byrne's projections of profitability have been horrifically optimistic, and investors who believed him got their stuff handed to them.

If Mr. Byrne stopped wasting time lashing out at critics and devoted a few hours a day to backing up his big talk, the critics would go away and the stock would thrive.

Overstock back on naked shorting list: Byrne whines originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Matt Schimler - Merrill Lynch: Also, what percentage then of your direct business is reselling returns?
Patrick Byrne: Got to be about a quarter of it. Isn't it Dave?
David Chidester: I don't think it's quite that high.
Byrne: What is our direct business showing up on a GAAP basis, David, as a percentage of sales?
Chidester: It's about 21%.

Does Patrick Byrne really follow Overstock? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Overstock.com plummets on earnings originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) reported impressive numbers yesterday -- and by impressive numbers, I mean another loss years after projections of profitability -- and its shares shot up more than 30%.

Gary Weiss reported on the less optimistic part of the press release that the company issued, but I'd like to take a second to point out something to investors. Even if the company's fundamentals are improving, this is still one of the creepiest public companies on the planet and it's wasting shareholder money on its creepy stalking campaigns.

If you go to DeepCapture.com -- CEO Patrick Byrne's website for trashing critics including Gary Weiss, Jim Cramer, Eliot Spitzer, and a couple of message board posters you've probably never heard of -- in the upper right hand corner of the site, you'll see a little ad: "Click here to shop Overstock.com. 5% of your purchase will go to support this effort." That link brings you to http://www.overstock.com/?TID=deepcapture where, presumably, any order you make will be tagged by the company to funnel 5% of the sale to the "effort."

What exactly is the money being used for? Former white-collar criminal and Overstock-critic Sam E. Antar received an email from former journalist Mark Mitchell: "I am writing a story about short-selllers (sic) and their relationships with independent researchers and the media. I would like to give you the opportunity to respond to various allegations regarding your work." He goes on to say that the article will be published on DeepCapture.com.

So here's the question I have: Why is Overstock.com's board of directors allowing Patrick Byrne to funnel money from the company's sales to a pet project aimed at pseudo-investigative pieces on short-sellers and their relationships with independent researches and the media?

If Patrick Byrne wants to use his own money to wage his self-proclaimed jihad, that's his business. But he should leave corporate assets out of it.

Shop at Overstock, support cyberstalking! originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Chalk up another problem for Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK), the failing online retailer run by the wacky CEO Patrick Byrne. Yet this law enforcement investigation doesn't appear to come with any "celebration" by Byrne.

Byrne is usually proud of the company's failures, but the announcement of the latest law enforcement investigation was buried deep in a press release about the latest set of quarterly losses: On April 15, 2008, we received a letter from the Office of the District Attorney of Marin County, California, stating that the District Attorneys of Marin and four other counties in California have begun an investigation into the way we advertise products for sale, together with an administrative subpoena seeking related information and documents. We follow industry advertising practices and we intend to respond fully to the subpoena and cooperate with the investigation.

This investigation is in addition to the ongoing investigation by the SEC, as well as the litigation between Overstock and Gradient Analytics. Gradient sharply criticized Overstock in its research reports and Byrne and company cried that the reports were not true. (Oddly enough, the company still has not turned a profit several years later, and is still a horrible investment.)

Note to Patrick Byrne: Those who have bad things to say about Overstock, its business model, its operations, and its never-ending financial losses aren't necessarily short sellers who are trying to profit off bad news. Many of them are realists who have figured out how awful your company is. Sorry, but sometimes the truth hurts.

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE, performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

Overstock.com being investigated by law enforcement in California originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In a recent interview with The Register, Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) CEO Patrick Byrne told (his side of) the story of Force Protection (NASDAQ: FRPT), a maker of armored vehicles for the military. To hear Byrne tell it, this is company that is keeping our troops safe but that, because of naked short selling, has been unable to raise the capital necessary to fill orders.

Force Protection was down more than 20% yesterday after the company again delayed the filing of its 10-K, citing the "scope of the work to be performed to complete its analysis and to identify the material weaknesses in the Company's internal control over financial reporting, including the need to restate its financial statements." Darn those naked short sellers! Why did they mess up the company's internal controls? Oh wait. They didn't. And in the middle of this mess, the CEO resigned earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Overstock.com, the crown princess of the naked short selling victims, announced that it actually lost four cents more in 2007 than previously reported as a result of changes in its revenue recognition based on "accounting comments from the staff of the SEC."

Continue reading Force Protection (FRPT): Sometimes the short sellers are right

Force Protection (FRPT): Sometimes the short sellers are right originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

According to an 8-K recently filed with the SEC, Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) CEO Patrick Byrne will be taking home what looks like a pretty small pay package: A bonus of $0 for his work in 2007, and a salary of $0 for 2008. He will receive a restricted stock grant of 15,000 shares, but that's pretty reasonable.

But at a cost of nothing, Patrick Byrne is still a very, very expensive CEO for the company's shareholders. His postings on message boards and stalking of the company's critics may be creating very serious liabilities for the company, and he and Overstock are currently the subject of an SEC investigation.

And that's to say nothing of the fact that, operationally, Overstock.com has been nothing short of an abject failure. The company has lost enormous sums of money since its inception. The company's sales growth has stopped, and as Sam Antar has written on his blog, Byrne has established a track record of failing to deliver on his projections.

So Byrne might seem like a bargain at $0 per year, but it's a bargain in the same way that buying lead-tainted toys for 50% off is. Your children's safety and the well-being of a public company are too important to cut corners. In the past couple months, Overstock has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in market value.

The cost of having Patrick Byrne as your CEO isn't $0 after all.

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne overpaid at $0 originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As Tracy Coenen discussed earlier, Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK), co-founder, president and chief operating officer Jason Lindsey resigned and left the company's board of directors.

Lindsey had already retired once but came back, in CEO Patrick Byrne's own words, "when I screwed it up a couple years ago". Byrne added that "He's done a superb job. Now that it is back in a solid trailing twelve month cash-flow-positive position, he wishes to return to our previous arrangement. While Jason won't be as involved in the day-to-day operations of the company, he will still oversee special projects in a part-time capacity."

After Byrne's pat on the back and attaboys, the stock hit a new multi-year low in this morning's trading.

There are a few things to keep in mind here. As Gary Weiss wrote on his blog,

Lindsey says he is leaving because he is "ready to take a less active role in order to spend time on some outside ventures." Baloney. Note that he is leaving as director -- a position that surely requires no major heavy lifting in a board as supine as this one.

Sam Antar is also suspicious of the resignation that comes in the midst of an SEC investigation: "Was the SEC investigation of Overstock.com an undisclosed factor in Jason C. Lindsey's resignation?" Antar also discusses accounting questions surrounding Overstock.com, and comments from Mr. Lindsey on conference calls that raise questions about his involvement.

One thing's for sure: The market's reaction to Lindsey leaving doesn't suggest that traders buy Byrne's "everything is hunky dory" assertion that Lindsey left because he has restored the company to such great condition he is no longer needed in a full-time role.

Why did Overstock's president and COO really resign? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Thu, 03 Jan 2008 14:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

As Gary Weiss discussed on his blog, Overstock.com (NASDAQ: OSTK) CEO Patrick Byrne issued a press release last night to complain that his company was back on the REG SHO list, a list of stocks experiencing failures to deliver often indicative of naked short selling. Overstock had disappeared from the list for 6 days after 669 consecutive days on the list.

Byrne added that "Here we are on the eve of the third anniversary of Regulation SHO (January 3) and hundreds of companies continue to be manipulated -- right under the SEC's watchful eye."

Here's where it gets interesting. According to a countersuit against Overstock filed by Copper River:

When asked about the December 2003 short squeeze, Byrne replied, "when opportunities come along where we can knee the shorts in the groin, that's always good for fun and amusement."

What did Byrne mean by that? If Patrick Byrne engaged in perpetrating an artificial short squeeze to "knee the shorts in the groin", that would be manipulation!

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne accuses others of manipulating his stock originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 28 Dec 2007 12:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Continue reading Overstock brags about customer service -- how about some profits?

Overstock brags about customer service -- how about some profits? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Tue, 18 Dec 2007 11:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne continues diversionary tactics originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 14 Dec 2007 17:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.